“When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin
She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin:
An abstemious man would reel at her look
As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.”

“Something tells me how
Her bright blue eyes
Are smiling;
She turns her head and now
When she wants she denies him…”

“God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his.”

“‎When she looked up at him, it was suddenly easy for her to imagine that her fears were pointless. That he would love her no matter what she told him, and that he was the kind of man who loved her already and would love her forever.”

“Look," I whisper to Cat, "Shooting star! That's good luck."
She rolls her eyes. "It's a plane, you idiot," she says, and when I look again I can see that she's right. Typical.”

“Thus he spake, honouring her; and she cast her eyes down with a smile divinely sweet; and her soul melted within her, uplifted by his praise.”

“Like a good and happy man increasing his virtue, he kissed her. She did not move away from him. She remained in the embrace of his right arm, her face nuzzling his shoulder, her eyes closed. He tipped her chin to look and measure opportunity. She could not open her eyes. Honorably he searched, but on her face he met no quarrel.”

“The girl's mouth was chapped, tight and pinched, her skin dry. Mama would say she looked woebegone, but as Bird looked at her eyes, the word she thought of was desperate.”

“If the Church would have her face shine, she must go up into the mount, and be alone with God. If she would have her courts of worship resound with eucharistic praises, she must open her eyes, and see humanity lying lame at the temple gates, and heal it in the miraculous name of Jesus.”

“When Nature her great masterpiece designed,
And framed her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,
She formed of various stuff the various Man.”